The dog hole was narrow and pitch-dark, the smell of damp earth rushing straight up my nose. I nearly suffocated crawling through it.

  I was the first one out. I dusted the dirt off my clothes, looked up—and froze for a moment.

  The streets inside the city weren’t deserted at all. Shops were open, lanterns burned bright, and here and there people walked past carrying shoulder poles. From a tavern drifted the rich scent of soup. In an alley window, I could even see a young woman bent over her embroidery.

  There was no sign whatsoever of plague or riot.

  I rubbed my nose. “Uh… everything looks pretty normal to me. People are fine, the city’s fine—so what exactly are we supposed to be looking at?”

  The boy in the lead raised a finger to his lips.

  “Shh.”

  I blinked. “Shh what? Nobody’s yelling.”

  “Listen,” he whispered.

  I pricked up my ears and listened left and right. Nothing.

  “I don’t hear anything,” I said, confused.

  Lian stopped walking, his brows knitting slightly. “Exactly. That’s the problem.”

  I paused, about to ask what he meant, when the boy turned around and spoke softly.

  “Even in the middle of the night, He Ling City should have dogs barking, babies crying, drunkards singing nonsense in the streets… But listen now. There’s nothing.”

  A chill crawled straight up my spine. I quickly looked around.

  The people carrying poles, the pedestrians chatting and strolling—everyone was there. Yet none of them made a sound. Not a footstep, not a murmur. It was as if the whole street had been wrapped in thick cotton: you could see everything clearly, but hear nothing at all.

  “…Damn,” I muttered under my breath, swallowing hard. “That’s creepy as hell.”

  Hua’s face darkened. “Something’s wrong in this city.”

  Lian glanced at us, his expression calm as ever. He only said two words.

  “Let’s go.”

  The boy nodded and led us into a narrow side alley. Our shadows stretched thin and long along the wall. At that moment, I even had the strange feeling that if we stood still too long, those colorful, lifelike “passersby” might slowly fade away like shadows.

  They took us twisting left and right through the city until we finally stopped in front of a ruined temple.

  I stared. “Why is it always a ruined temple with you guys? Don’t you know any other places?”

  Then something occurred to me and I frowned. “Last time I saw you, you were in Luoyan City. How’d you end up in He Ling City so fast? And what exactly is going on here?”

  The three kids seemed overwhelmed by my barrage of questions. They huddled together without saying a word.

  Hua nudged me aside. “You’re scaring them! Who asks that many questions at once? Come on, let Uncle handle this.”

  He crouched down with a friendly smile. “So, what are your names? And what brought you to He Ling City?”

  The boy hesitated before speaking timidly. “We… don’t really have names. People used to call me Juan.”

  He pointed to the two behind him. “I take them around begging. We only got here a few days ago. Then… something happened.”

  “What happened?” I asked quickly.

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  Juan bit his lip, his voice so low the night wind almost carried it away.

  “A few days ago, He Ling City was perfectly normal. But after the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival… overnight… everyone just stopped talking. Like they’d all agreed to it beforehand. Nobody speaks. Nobody makes much noise. The streets became terrifyingly quiet. We didn’t dare ask questions or run around. We just pretended to act like everyone else. Afraid we’d get into trouble, we hid here in this temple. It’s been safe enough.”

  My scalp prickled. Thinking back to those silent “people” on the streets made the back of my neck go cold.

  At that moment, Lian suddenly spoke.

  “The red string on your wrists…”

  His voice was soft, probing. “Have you seen a group of men in gray robes? The kind who usually carry shovels and wooden mallets?”

  I froze.

  Wait—that was clearly about those grave robbers.

  My heart tightened immediately. I had a bad feeling they were almost certainly involved.

  Juan’s face turned deathly pale. He shrank into the corner of the ruined temple, not daring to speak.

  Seeing this, Hua waved his hand with a reassuring smile. “Relax. We already drove those fellows away. Go on—did they force you to do something?”

  Juan finally stammered out the truth.

  “Yes… We were begging in Luoyan City when they caught us. They wanted to drag us down to be buried alive with the dead. I ran away with the two of them, but the red strings on our wrists wouldn’t come off no matter what we tried.”

  Only then did I notice the red strings properly. They were ragged and frayed, but a section of each was tightly bound around their wrists, almost like it had grown into the flesh.

  Lian reached into his robe and took out a small porcelain bottle, no bigger than his palm.

  “That’s easy enough.”

  He pulled out the stopper and sprinkled the liquid over the red strings. Almost immediately the cords began to dissolve, as if corroded, and fell to the ground.

  My eyes widened. “Whoa—if you had something like that, why didn’t you use it earlier? If you’d splashed some on Fang Mei’s face, let’s see how he’d keep changing shapes!”

  Hua nearly burst out laughing.

  Lian simply glanced at me calmly and tucked the bottle away. “You’re oversimplifying things.”

  I couldn’t help asking, “So what now? Are we going to meet that senior you mentioned and then leave immediately?”

  Hua, however, yawned and flopped down inside the ruined temple.

  “Right now? The most important thing is sleep. This place isn’t bad. At least it’s better than the tomb—you can stretch your legs and actually lie flat.”

  He raked the straw bedding beneath him a few times and then collapsed with a thud, even rolling over contentedly.

  I turned to Lian, intending to ask his opinion.

  He looked at me faintly. “Wasn’t this what you wished for earlier? A proper rest.”

  I choked on my words. “What I wished for was a hot bath and a real bed—not spending the night with a pile of dead grass!”

  Juan was very considerate. He quickly moved aside and patted a spot on the straw bedding, motioning for me to lie down.

  I sighed and settled in.

  The ruined temple echoed with the wind. Dust occasionally drifted down from the roof. Still, it counted as a half-decent night of rest.

  Nothing happened through the night.

  When I woke the next morning, my whole body ached as if I’d been beaten by a rotating squad of thugs all night. Fragments of a nightmare still clung to my mind—Fang Mei and that bandit leader chasing me hand in hand while I ran for dear life. Above my head hung a giant eye, spinning slowly, its pupil reflecting the entire city of He Ling.

  I shuddered.

  Just as I was about to go back to sleep, Hua slapped my shoulder.

  “Up, up. Let’s go grab breakfast.”

  Lian added quietly, “Earlier is better.”

  Still half-asleep, I yawned my way out of the temple with them. I glanced back once—Juan and the others were still sleeping soundly.

  Outside, the early morning streets already had people moving about.

  I couldn’t help muttering, “You guys are way too bold. Last night the city gates were flying black flags. Who knows what’s actually going on here, and you’re just strolling out onto the streets like this?”

  Hua grinned. “If you’re scared, you can always go back and keep sleeping.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Sleep my ass. What if I wake up one day and we’ve all been wiped out together?”

  Walking ahead, Lian didn’t turn back. He simply said,

  “That’s why we need to take a look.”

  To my surprise, the morning market in He Ling City was running as usual.

  The streets were bustling—people carrying poles, pushing carts, selling vegetables, buying meat… everyone busy as if nothing had happened.

  But the more closely you looked, the colder your spine felt.

  Not a single person spoke.

  The vegetable sellers and buyers communicated entirely with hand gestures. Coins and produce lined up almost perfectly, exchanged back and forth in complete silence. No bargaining, no arguing.

  The scariest part was the butcher.

  I watched him raise his cleaver and bring it down in one stroke. The pig gave a single scream before dying instantly. Yet the butcher’s face didn’t change at all. His blade rose and fell like he was chopping firewood. Blood splattered across the ground while the onlookers watched expressionlessly, without uttering a word.

  I quickly pulled my head back and whispered, “Why does this feel even scarier than last night?”

  Hua leisurely twirled his fan and glanced down the street. “Hmm. Efficient marketplace, though.”

  “You are telling me!” I shot him a glare. “Nobody’s talking! Don’t you think that’s weird? If we go around speaking normally, won’t we stick out like a sore thumb?”

  Right then the system chimed in.

  [Why worry about standing out? Aren’t you usually the loudest one around? Maybe one sentence from you will bring the whole city back to life.]

  “Give me a break!” I gritted my teeth. “I am absolutely not volunteering to be the first idiot again.”